


Stars I Trust

by Sleepwalkingnun



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Gen, SHIT GETS REAL FLUFFY, and HEROES, get ready for some gay ROOF TALKS about CHILDHOODS, get ready for some serious Fluff(TM), it gets REAL cheesy too so sorry about it, seriously inspired by the musical Fly By Night, we're all made of stardust and all that other bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 01:40:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7665352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sleepwalkingnun/pseuds/Sleepwalkingnun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jillian Holtzmann didn't have any heroes growing up, so she made them herself.</p><p> </p><p>Holtzbert fluff...kind of. I guess it could be construed as platonic. But it's Holtzmann, so it's automatically pretty gay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stars I Trust

**Author's Note:**

> Title and little bitty plot details (specific constellations, the line "I trust stars," and Holtz growing up in South Dakota) were inspired by the song Stars I Trust from the musical Fly By Night. It's a fantastic song and a fantastic musical, I'd recommend it to everyone.

Contrary to popular belief, JIllian Holtzmann is an extreme introvert. She was the first (and still really the only) Ghostbuster to fully embrace their rockstar-like persona thrusted upon them by the media in light of recent events. She quickly became the favorite of little girls, preteen and teenage girls, even adult women, across America.

Kevin was formerly in charge of handling all fan mail, but that position was quickly taken over by Patty, who opened each letter with care. She soon noticed that the envelopes addressed in crayon with rural addresses scrawled on them disappeared in every new delivery of mail. She also soon noticed the roof was littered with these empty envelopes every morning after a new shipment--every morning after Holtz disappeared for the night. She took the hint and began leaving the weirdly specific group of envelopes on Holtz’s workbench right away.

One night, after a particularly stressful bust, the crew dispersed to their preferred relaxing activity--Patty read books on the history of New York, Kevin lost games of Minesweeper, and Abby checked the message boards for potential cases. Loud crashes and bangs could be heard from the 2nd floor. Erin took a small break from her sudoku puzzle to make the group tea. She quickly passed them out and prepared to interrupt Holtzmann, which was no small task.

“Holtzy? I made everyone some-What the?” Erin gasped as the entered the lab. Where Holtz should have been was a grotesque Holtzmann-shaped doll connected to pulleys and wires, making the doll move erratically. The loud noises came from cleverly placed speakers and the lights flashed as if they were connected to a large power source. “ _Great._ Okay. Holtzmann has disappeared and now this abomination is our engineer.” Erin cautiously slid past the dummy and continued up to the 3rd floor. Still no sign of Jillian. The 4th floor was the same. Erin grabbed a nearby coat hanging from a rack and kicked the shoddy door to the roof open.

Holtzmann sat with her back to the door, overlooking the city. Pictures of 10-year-olds in yellow glasses and colored-pencil drawings of the crew littered the ground. The wind picked up slightly as Holtz grabbed at the papers to make sure none flew away. A particularly crude drawing of Erin began to float away as Holtzmann made a mad dash at the paper--leaning over the side of the building and just barely clutching it before--

“Jillian, be careful!” Called Erin before she could catch herself. She ran to the other woman, who turned with the paper in hand. “Oh, oh God. I’m sorry--I just...you really...scared me there,” she stuttered as Holtz took off what appeared to be very dark sunglasses.

“Relax. I’m not falling off of a building any time soon. I’ve been there too many times. 4, to be exact,” Holtz counted her fingers as if falling off of a building was a common enough activity to forget about. “Yeah, 4! Well, and a half.”

“How is you almost falling 4 stories not the scariest thing I’ve seen today?” Erin whispered under her breath.

“Perhaps it’s the fact that we hunt ghosts for a living, Erin. Ghosts?”

“No! I mean that dummy you set up. What on earth WAS that, Holtzmann?”

Holtzmann shrugged. “When I realized you guys didn’t come up if you heard ‘scary’ noises, I took the opportunity to set up a little ‘No Girls Or Kevin Allowed’ zone for myself. I like to be alone sometimes. It’s not that weird.”

But the dummy?” Erin shuddered. “That wasn’t necessary.”

“But it wasn’t not unnecessary. Amirite?”

“I...No? Yes? I don’t know, whatever. It doesn’t matter. What are you even doing up here?”

Holtzmann gathered the papers in her hands defensively. “Just some light reading on the most interesting subject in the world. Us.” Holtz plopped down in her chair and put her legs up on the edge of the building. She scanned a letter quickly, smiling as she sat on it so it wouldn’t fly away.

“May I join you?” Erin scooted another lawn chair from the corner of the roof next to Jillian. “I promise I’ll be quiet. I brought tea!”

Jillian grabbed the tea, put on her sunglasses, and handed the stack of letters to Erin. “Sure. Just...ya know. Quiet. This _is_ the ‘No Friends Or Kevin’ zone.”

Erin leafed excitedly through the papers. The theme seemed to be children--a 16-year-old lesbian who was inspired by Holtz. A 7-year-old black girl who sent a picture of her Patty costume for Halloween this year. At least 4 different boys and girls who wanted to become physicists like Erin. A 10-year-old writing Abby about starting her own Ghostbusting club at school. It only took about 45 seconds of “complete silence” before--

“Okay, I know you said quiet. But I have to ask. Why are you wearing sunglasses?” Erin asked in a whisper.

Holtz sighed and took off her glasses. She removed a small piece of, what appeared to be, colored film from a small slit in her glasses to reveal transparent glass. “These are just my regular glasses. I usually have a piece of yellow gel in them--for Dyslexia, ya know--but thiiiiiiiiisss,” she held up the black film, “is something of my own invention. Look.” Holtz shoved the ‘invention’ in Erin’s face. There appeared to be small pinpricks layered in the gel. “You slip this little baby into the glasses and--BAM. You’ve got stars in New York City.”

“Stars? Can I try?” Erin put on the glasses and stared at the city. The city seemed calmer somehow. The yellow, blue, and reds of the lights mimicked the subtle tint in the real stars. “Wow...there really are stars,” she chuckled.

“Yeah, I mean the stars _are_ there, Erin. There in New York City. The same as they are in South Dakota. Even if we can’t see them, they’re there. So I just made a little invention to help me see them.”

“South Dakota?”

“I grew up in South Dakota. Did you not know that?”

“Holtz, none of us know anything about you,” Erin said in disbelief.

Holtzmann genuinely seemed surprised. “Weeeeeeeelll, I did. Stars were my best friends there. This may come as a surprise to you, but I had trouble getting along with the other kids. But the stars were always there. Then I moved to New York for college, and I lost them. When I was in South Dakota and felt lonely, I would go out and look at the stars. They’re _ancient_ , Erin. I mean like...billions of years old.”

“I’m a physicist, I know how old stars are--”

“Leave those on. Those stars that you see there are the stars that I saw in South Dakota. There’s Leo, the lion. And Orion. And Serpens and Drake. They’re the same stars! And they’re made of the same stuff we are. I like looking up to the stars. And then I moved to New York, and I...uh...I didn’t have them anymore.”

Erin stared at the make-shift stars in complete silence, finally seeing the stars that Jillian saw. Erin took off the glasses and saw Jillian. She saw a small girl sitting alone in South Dakota at night, drawing pictures of Lions and Dragons in the sky with her mind. She saw a little girl made of hydrogen, helium, carbon--the same as stars. She saw a little girl that nobody loved with stars that everybody loved. Erin looked down and saw the letters that Jillian clutched in her hands as she thought about stars.

“I...never really had a hero when I was little either,” Erin said.

“I had stars. I trust stars.”

“I trust stars too. I trust us.”

Jillian smiled and took the glasses back from Erin. She slowly put the glasses back on and thought about the 16-year old, the 10-year-old, the 7-year-old, and the little girl from South Dakota. They were all made of stardust.


End file.
